A case study of LEGO Mindstorms'#8482; suitability for artificial intelligence and robotics courses at the college level

Abstract

This paper examines LEGO Mindstorms'™ suitability as a hardware platform for integrating robotics into an Artificial Intelligence course organized around the agent paradigm popularized by Russell and Norvig. This evaluation discusses how kits and projects based on Mindstorms supported students' exploration of the issues behind the design of agents from three classes in Russell and Norvig's intelligent agent taxonomy. The paper's investigation also examines several popularly-perceived limitations of the Mindstorms package for college-level robotics projects and shows that most of these "limitations" are not serious impediments to Mindstorms' use, while certain other of these "limitations" do indeed present challenges to the platform's use.